Spine Centers of Excellence Summit

7:15am – 8:00am

Conference Registration & Networking Breakfast

8:00am – 8:15am

Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

8:15am – 9:00am

Spine Centers of Excellence: Current Trends and What’s Ahead

More healthcare organizations are seeking partnerships with talented spine surgeons to become designated as a center of excellence, which takes an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to care. Multidisciplinary spine centers can offer treatments that range from the conservative, such as pain management, physical therapy and nutritional care, to diagnostics, imaging, spine surgery and postoperative care. Hospitals, in particular, are increasingly considering centers of excellence. If they don't refine spine care protocols, they may stand to lose even more access to patients as payers continue to push patients to facilities that perform more efficient care at lower costs. But patients also want to have their care at centers of excellence, and they are becoming more sophisticated at researching and finding data on provider outcomes. Ultimately, spine centers of excellence champion a commitment to high-quality, efficient care, which is attractive to payers, physicians, and most important, patients.

9:00am – 9:45am

Achieving a Center of Excellence Designation

The benefits of achieving a center of excellence designation can include increased patient volumes, improved team cooperation, reduced complications, decreased costs and a considerable marketing advantage, which is critical in today's crowded and increasingly consumer-driven market. For centers pursuing these certifications, tracking data and metrics including outcomes, readmission rates, length of stay and cost per case is critical. Internal standards such as tangible planning, implementation, monitoring and measurement are key to achieving success. This session will explore all this and other necessities to achieve a center of excellence designation.

9:45am – 10:15am

Networking & Refreshments Break

10:15am – 11:00am

The Future of Spine Care: Collaboration and Engagement Among Hospitals, Physicians

While back pain remains one of the most common conditions treated by physicians, unfortunately the prevailing model for the delivery of spine services is often archaic, with discreet and siloed services lacking rapid access, care integration and a focus on an exceptional patient experience. One of the most important and beneficial changes is the emergence of deliberate efforts by hospitals and health systems to collaborate with their medical staff. In practice, this translates to the management and delivery of the core elements of care (clinical outcomes, operational efficiency and financial performance) migrating away from hospitals and physicians working independently, and sometimes at cross purposes, toward increased collaboration for the benefit of all stakeholders, including the patient. This session will explore how this collaboration is foundational to the success of a spine program. Without aligned goals among providers, spine programs will not achieve three critical goals of growth, quality and differentiation.

11:00am – 11:45am

Patient Outcome Analysis: A Competitive Advantage in Spine Surgery

Innovation and care delivery are inherently tethered. Whether through research, technology, clinical practice, or business strategy, healthcare organizations are consistently looking for new ways of delivering care to optimize patient outcomes and organizational standing. This session will explore several emerging trends within spine surgery aimed at improving clinical and financial outcomes, including:

- Disc replacements and fusions occurring in the outpatient setting, largely as a cost-containment exercise

- Increased demand for endoscopic surgery and similar minimally invasive techniques

- Increased use of augmented reality technology to increase the ability to perform procedures in the ambulatory environment

- Hospitals increasingly partnering with ambulatory surgery centers to remain competitive

- Increased use of technology platforms to help predict patient outcomes and guide treatment decisions

11:45am – 12:30pm

How to Improve Clinical and Financial Outcomes in Spine Care

The most successful spine centers of excellence are those that engage the right physicians, empower care teams with powerful technology and keep patients engaged across complex treatment plans that involve multiple providers and different facilities. This session will explore these topics, and how to improve clinical and financial outcomes in spine care.

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Luncheon

1:30pm – 2:15pm

Reimbursement Models

The cost of healthcare in the U.S. has continued to increase. Payment models outside of the traditional fee-for-service paradigm are emerging in spine care. Providers that preemptively adopt bundled payments can increase patient volumes from payers seeking cost-effective care. This session will explore who providers should begin considering reimbursement models that focus on noninterventional spine care. While bundled care models have been successfully implemented, challenges facing institutions adopting bundled care payment models include financial stressors during adoption of the model, distribution of risks, incentivization of treating only low risk patients, and nuanced variation in procedures leading to variation in costs. This session will explore reimbursement models in spine care.

2:15pm – 3:15pm

Panel: Current Trends in Ambulatory Spine Surgery

Spine surgery continues to move into the ambulatory setting in an effort to pair high-quality care delivery with low-cost facilities.

Spine surgery has been gradually moving out of the inpatient setting and into ambulatory surgery centers (ASC). This change has been in response to decreasing invasiveness of surgery, patients’ desire to recuperate at home, and significant net reductions in cost, which is critical in this era of value-based care. With this ongoing transition from hospital-based to standalone ASC-based spine surgery, careful attention should be paid to spine surgery in this setting, specifically its safety, outcomes, protocols, and cost implications. This session will explore safety and utilization trends in ambulatory spine surgery.

3:15pm – 3:45pm

Networking & Refreshments Break

3:45pm – 4:30pm

Developing Successful Spine Centers of Excellence and Managing Quality

Demand for spine care is increasing, and there's probably no better time to develop and operate a spine center. There are millions of people around the world suffering from spinal pain, and until they receive help, they will continue to be consumers of these services, even if they have to go outside of this country to get the most state-of-the-art care. It is crucial to make a commitment to transparent, measurable accountability, and to adhere to and be governed by the establishment of an operating management protocol that includes the following factors, which will be explored in this session:

- Establishment of spine center policies and procedures

- Identification of appropriate patient, consumer and market needs

- Federal and state regulatory requirements

- Continuous quality improvement

- Monitoring of technological advancements and adaptability to change

4:30pm – 5:15pm

Establishment of a University Academic Spine Center

This session will explore how one academic medical center became the largest and most comprehensive spine care facility in a metropolitan area in just a few years. The multidisciplinary spine center brings together orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, neurologists, physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, pain-management anesthesiologists, radiologists, and physical and occupational therapists. It became successful because a group of physicians bought into the philosophy of a comprehensive interdisciplinary program, where they were willing to sacrifice some territorial claims, and were willing to put patient care and the good of the institution above individual egos.

5:15pm

End of Day One

7:15am – 8:00am

Networking Breakfast

8:00am – 8:15am

Chairperson’s Remarks

8:15am – 9:00am

Ambulatory Surgery Center Ownership Models

Outpatient spine surgery performed in ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) has grown dramatically over the last decade because of significant clinical and economic advantages to patients, physicians and the healthcare industry. Physicians benefit from the efficiencies of the outpatient setting and potential profit from ownership. There are various ownership models which differ primarily on the amount of ownership attributed to physicians, management companies and hospital systems, the key players in the space. The majority of ASCs are still solely owned by physicians, which gives physicians the benefit of maximum control but brings the challenges of management and contracting as well. Joint ventures involving various combinations of physicians, ASC management companies and hospital systems strive to find a balance between physician influence and management expertise from their partners. ASCs owned solely by hospital systems are on the rise and seek to involve physicians in a co-management role. This session will explore how this market will continue to grow and alternative business models that will arise as the key players look for the right combination to maximize efficiency and clinical success.

9:00am – 9:45am

Innovations in Spine Surgery: Past, Present and Future

This session will explore recent innovations in spinal surgery, focusing on technologies including robotics and augmented virtual reality. Topics to be discussed will include:

- Utilization, learning curves, indications and pitfalls associated with the use of these technologies

- Trends surrounding biologics, regenerative medicine and novel devices used in today’s spine care of patients.

9:45am – 10:15am

Networking & Refreshments Break

10:15am – 11:00am

Increasing Patient Satisfaction

Patient satisfaction at spine surgery centers is a matter of concern. In specialized surgeries like spine, the satisfaction of a patient is not merely because of surgical outcomes but also empathy of doctor, rehabilitation programs and friendliness of the hospital. Doctors who spend time in explaining the ailments and possible outcomes to the patients have more satisfactory results. A caring attitude of the staff and empathy in interaction makes a lot of difference in the success of the practice of a surgeon. This session will explore all this and best practices to increase patient satisfaction in spine surgery.

11:00am – 11:45am

Streamlining Delivery of Surgical Spine Care

Surgery is usually a last resort for people suffering from spine conditions, so it can be disheartening when patients begin their treatment in a surgeon’s office. Reengineering a multidisciplinary approach to spine care is one of the ways to streamline care for patients. This session will present a case study of how one healthcare organization launched a comprehensive spine center of excellence, housing the latest equipment for neuronavigation, imaging and multidisciplinary care. These developments have laid a strong foundation for surgical spine care, while improving access to high-quality care for patients with all types of spine conditions — including the most common ones.

11:45am – 12:30pm

Marketing Your Spine Center of Excellence

Even the best run center of excellence cannot thrive without a well-designed marketing strategy. The best campaigns lead to a strong referral business ensuring a steady flow of patients. To achieve desired results, hospital executives must understand the ins and outs of awareness campaigns and relationship-building with outside physicians. This session will explore how building a marketing campaign can transform a center of excellence into a strong regional healthcare provider.

12:30pm

Conference Concludes

12:45pm – 2:45pm

Workshop: Keys to Assembling a Successful Spine Center of Excellence

Spine centers of excellence afford many advantages for healthcare providers and the populations they serve. To achieve full value, proper assembly is an absolute necessity. This effectively forces healthcare providers to pursue establishment largely via trial-and-error, diminishing opportunities for success. Successful development of a center of excellence first requires the acquisition of a detailed understanding of the delivery model and its benefits. Then, concerted actions must be taken on a particular series of administrative and clinical fronts, treating them in prescribed manners to afford synergies which yield an exceptionally high level of care. Centers of excellence have the ability to dramatically enhance the depth and breadth of healthcare services available in communities. This session will help healthcare providers better understand centers of excellence and be more capable and confident in associated development initiatives, affording greater opportunities for themselves and their patient populations.